


A Stone Fallen

by Luminousloo



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-15
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-11-01 06:52:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10916604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luminousloo/pseuds/Luminousloo
Summary: Post ME3 destroy ending Garrus struggles to search for Shepard in an unknown world.





	1. Chapter 1

“Garrus…” 

Tali’s apprehensive voice came over the com in the main battery. He knew that she was voted most likely to retain her head and therefore sent as an emissary by Alenko and the rest of the crew. 

“I don’t want to talk about it, Tali.”

“Garrus, you know they mean well.”

Garrus sighed and banged his closed fist against his console. Not knowing was killing him. He could reasonably understand Alenko’s need to find some closure, but without decent communication with Earth Garrus couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t be completely sure until he looked himself. 

“I tried. I can’t add her name to that wall until its been confirmed. It’s not happening.”

Tali made a non-committal soothing noise. Garrus knew it to mean “when you’re ready”. He didn’t argue. He wouldn’t be “ready”. He changed the subject. 

“The battery systems are back online, at least. When we are finally able to get off this disgustingly humid jungle planet we’ll be able to shoot at whatever the hell is up there.” Tali, used to his deflecting, pivoted along with him. 

“The drive core is also back online. Traynor and I have been working to fill the gaps left when…. Well, it’s been hard without EDI. But I think we can do it. Liara’s communication networks have been irreplaceable.”

Garrus glanced at the board to his left. Up until a couple weeks ago it had displayed up to the minute information on the Turian front against the Reapers. But it had gone dark. Even the main com system in the war room with its fancy QEC had shut down. Most of Liara’s systems had also shutdown, but she had some much older hard-wired connections on her ship that she was getting some input from. Stray messages and news vids, a couple of high priority encrypted feeds. They knew that a pulse had fired from the Crucible, and almost instantaneously the Geth fleet had ceased to function, dreadnaughts floating aimlessly into one another and primes on the ground falling down where they stood. Joker had made the observation that about the time that red pulse of energy had overtaken them EDI had fallen over in her co-pilot’s seat, unresponsive. She was laid out in the AI core currently, and Joker refused to talk about her. Joker wouldn’t talk about much of anything really. He could be found in his cockpit, attempting to make the connections that were severed during their attempt to outrun the pulse. 

 

“How much longer, do you think?” Garrus asked. 

“You know we don’t know that…” Tali sighed, he could almost see her, tipping her head towards him in that pitying way everyone had been looking at him since they landed in this jungle. 

“Right, ok. Let me know when you have more information. And if you see Alenko, tell him I’m sorry but I just can’t. “

“Right. And Garrus?” The apprehension in her voice was back. And something else he couldn’t quite place. 

“What is it?” He was not in the mood for more pity. He was ready for action. Ready to do whatever it took to get this bird in the air and back where he had last seen… her. He scrubbed his brow plates with his hand, thinking of her face as he’d last seen it, telling him she loved him and to get on the Normandy and GO! 

Tali’s words came in a rush. Like she was afraid to say it for fear it wouldn’t be true. “For what it’s worth? I don’t think it’s time yet either. I think she’s too strong for that.”

For the first time since He had been evac’ed Garrus felt something besides desperation. 

“Why Tali? Why do you think that?” His subvocals were keening. If she’d picked up that note she didn’t say anything. She let out a hum of her own, and a long breath as she thought. Finally after a long pause Tali spoke, so quietly he had to strain to hear her. 

“Because it’s Shepard. Why not?”

 

She didn’t know if what she was feeling was death, or pain, or all of the above. If this was death it didn’t have any resemblance to the multitudes of thought every sentient species had on the subject. Things were black and then white, grey and then red red red. Sometimes she heard sounds but mostly her ears rang like in the aftermath of an explosion that she had been too close too. Her body would not move though she felt like she still had one. But maybe she was wrong? Maybe this was it. Floating between colors in a slightly warm insulated universe.

She had some memory that something had happened. That she had to make a choice. The red overpowered her again and consciousness faded away to nothing. 

 

With the citadel in ruins nobody knew where the search and rescue attempt should start. Hackett was on the first ship to drop onto the ruined structure and the chaos and destruction he saw was beyond anything he had expected. Walking along one of the wards he noticed the keepers scrambling in and out of doors and tunnels exposed by whatever blast the crucible had released. Getting round in the Citadel was all but impossible for his team, but these strange spider-like creatures were scrambling about with ease, hauling debris and clearing pathways. Up ahead he even saw several laying out bodies in neat rows. Hackett covered his eyes. The rows were innumerable. 

“Coates, send a team to check those rows for any survivors. And anyone, I mean ANYONE vaguely matches Shepard’s description, notify me.” Hackett called without looking behind him. 

“Yes sir!” Coates responded, adjusting his helmet. The internal air recyclers in their suits would keep any smell out, but it wasn’t hard to imagine that with this amount of bodies in normal circumstances the smell would be overpowering. It had taken two weeks to get a ship running well enough to get off the planet, and then another couple days to find a suitable drop zone on the ruined space station. Who knows how many people had been laying here exposed to god-knows-what until they had been able to get to them. 

His team spread out, taking stock, observing and making notes about what can be done structurally to get more people and teams in to help. 

“Priority is search and rescue, people. Search and retrieve at least.” Hackett turned in a circle, his team was jumping to work around him, beginning the very long process of making sense of the chaos. Hackett sighed lowering his body on to a nearby piece of rubble. He had been considering retirement before the threat with the reapers and now? He was getting too old for this. His eyes wandered back to the rows and rows of countless bodies. Human, Turian, Asari, Hanar, Drell, Elcor. It was horrible. 

Hackett turned to Coates, to tell him that they needed to get delegates from the other races up here before they mishandled the bodies according to their customs, and noticed a keeper had stopped and was looking at him. As much as one of those things could look at something, anyway. It stood on his left side and tipped its head to the right as if deciding something, and then it turned around and walked away a few steps and unmistakably looked back at where Hackett sat. 

“Coates, do you see this?” Hackett called to his aid. Coates looked up from consulting his checklist. 

“What sir?”

“This keeper. I think it wants something.” The keeper took another couple steps away and looked back again in the universal sign for follow me.

“I would make a joke about Timmy falling in the well sir, if it wasn’t such an awful time for jokes, sir. “ Hackett pursed his lips. The keeper was doing a pretty good imitation of Lassie at that. He was surprised Coates knew the reference. Hackett pulled his body up off the rubble. When did his knees begin aching so much? He wasn’t meant to be wearing these suits anymore. It was too heavy on his joints. 

The keeper continued to scuttle away toward the far end of the ward, away from the rows and rows of bodies and under an overhang there that had partly collapsed. Hackett had not seen it when they came onboard, but part of the overhang had been propped up with metal girders creating a kind of tented opening. The keeper looked back at Hackett once more and scuttled under the overhang. The message was obvious. 

Hackett crouched down and looked into the darkness under the overhang. Off in the distance he could see a light flashing. White and then red, white and then red. Under the overhang he had to crouch down, but he was able to move along mostly unencumbered. The keepers clearly had made a path here, with things dragged and piled on both sides. 

The keeper scrambled around a corner and out of sight, Hackett hurried to catch up. As he approached the light switched from red to white again, illuminating a glass door, miraculously intact and his keeper/guide waiting almost patiently, it’s head trained on him. Hackett cleared his throat. 

“What is it?” He asked. He didn’t know what language these things spoke, if any, but it didn’t seem to matter. It lifted one of it’s legs and hit a panel on the wall and the glass door slid aside, just as the light inside turned red again. A wall of air hit them and the Keeper moved to go inside. Hackett followed, though he thought that maybe wandering off alone on a decimated space station with a strange creature no one in millennia has understood was maybe not his smartest hour. 

The door slid closed behind them and he felt the distinctive feeling of air pressurizing around him. His suit’s internal meters blinged.

“Exterior oxygen levels stable” said his suit’s VI, and Hackett looked at his Omni-tool, sure enough this room was stable for life. The keeper moved through another glass door on the far side of the small room. As they moved through this second doorway the light again switched from red to white and Hackett took a minute to adjust his eyes in the brightness. 

The room was entirely white with a domed white pod at the far end. The keeper that had brought him here moved off toward the platform, opening a panel in the wall and working at something inside. A beeping was coming from the dome, and Hackett moved close to see what it was making the noise, but the surface was opaque. He ran his fingers over it, looking for a crack or a seam, but it was completely solid and smooth. 

“What is it? Is this what you brought me here for?” Hackett said, growing impatient. 

The Keeper turned again, seemed to look Hackett right in the face, and then raised one of its giant legs and tapped directly on the top of the domed surface. The beeping stopped and the dome shuddered to life. A sliver of light appeared in a line down the center and the two sides began to slide apart revealing more bright white light. Hackett stepped away shielding his eyes, and when the light had dimmed and he was able to look again he gasped. 

“Coates!” He yelled into his com, breathlessly. “Coates, use my locator and bring a medical team immediately.”

“Sir, yes sir!” Coates replied “Have you found a survivor?”

“Yes.” Hackett replied, approaching the revealed body slowly, almost reverently. “I hope so anyway.”

“Anyone we know, sir?” Hackett could tell Coates was holding his breath. 

“It’s, dear god I cant believe it. It’s her. It’s Shepard.” Hackett responded. Her red hair and immobile figure was recognizable even in it’s current state. 

Hackett raised his head to thank the Keeper that had led him there but it had gone. Hackett was completely alone with the woosh woosh woosh sound of whatever machine was keeping Shepard alive.


	2. All the King's Horses

Shepard groaned. Her eyes felt like sandpaper under her lids and her mouth was so dry it was stuck shut. Slowly she opened and closed her hands, they felt like they weighed a million kgs, and lifted her arm to rub at her eyes, which refused to open.

 

“I would refrain from doing that, if I were you.” A familiar clipped voice said. Shepard groaned again.

 

“The skin grafts on your face are new,” the voice continued, “And if you upset them I’ll have to sedate you again so I can restart. I am sure you would much rather wake up.”

 

Shepard licked her chapped lips, and cleared her throat, forcing her mouth to form a word.

 

“Miranda?” She croaked, barely more than a whisper.

 

“Of course. Who else to bring you back from the dead again, and quite so effectively?” Miranda chuckled. “This time you gave me an extra challenge. Take away our higher synthetic AI tech and it’s an entirely new game. Good thing I only rise to occasions like that.”

 

If she hadn’t been so parched and tired Shepard would have laughed, but instead she just groaned again. She felt the rim of a cool glass touch her lip and she sipped greedily. The water was refreshing and sweet. A couple more swallows and she was able to make some sound when she spoke.

 

“You have been on intravenous fluids, but I’m sure you are parched. You have been asleep for quite a while.”

 

“Garrus?” Shepard said. She was still trying to get her eyes open, and though she was beginning to succeed the room swam before her. Miranda’s black and white clad body was a blur leaning over Shepard’s bed.

 

“Unfortunately we have had no word from the Normandy since you called for an evac just before hitting the beam to the Citadel. It’s been three weeks, and whatever you did up there knocked out the whole relay system. Our communications are limited, and we only have reliable networking within the Sol system. Some bits and pieces have come through but nothing reliable and confirmed. I’m sorry, Shepard.”

 

Shepard let her eyes fall shut again. _This isn’t right_ she thought. _No Shepard without Vakarian. If anyone lived it was supposed to be him_. On reflex she tried to bring her hand up to her face again. This time Miranda caught it.

 

“I said no, Shepard. I wasn’t joking about upsetting the grafts. You really wont like it, even if you are on an elcor’s worth of pain meds. I’m sorry. You know if I had any news at all I would give it to you.”

 

Shepard opened her eyes again. This time the room swam into focus. Miranda’s blue eyes looked into her own with a solemn expression.

 

“They have every ship in the fleet patrolling the system, and every available scientist working on the relay to repair the damage. You are next to no help to them now, damaged as you are.”  


Shepard realized she had no idea what state she was in. The last thing she remembered was shooting at the Destroy station on the crucible, and the searing pain as the resulting fireball engulfed her. After that it was a blur of light and color and nothing. She cleared her throat again, this time coughing a bit as well. Miranda helped her sit up a bit and gave her more water.

 

“Am I?” Shepard said, gesturing to herself, “How bad is it?”

 

“Well when you were… Recovered…” Miranda moved away from the bed to check her various instruments. “You had already done a good bit of healing internally. Fractures in many vertebrae as well as your pelvis and femur. I’m sure you had a concussion at one point, but its unclear exactly how severe as it was mostly healed by the time you were found.”

 

“I’m sorry, this isn’t making sense. Where was I that I was able to heal but had not been found?”

 

Miranda finished checking the readouts on her machines and then turned around. She gripped the side of Shepard’s bed and heaved a sigh.

 

“Unfortunately the truth is we don’t really know much more than that. Admiral Hackett and a team had been dropped onto the Citadel, as part of the search and rescue attempt. Of course everyone had been notified to look for you. Apparently one of the keepers led the Admiral to you. You were inside some sort of stasis pod. It was doing what it could for life support, and appeared to have the capability to heal some injuries while others remained as they were, but stable. You were extracted from the equipment and returned to Earth and my care, and when the team returned to follow up on the stasis pod they could not locate it’s position. It’s as if it was never there.”

 

“A pod? On the Citadel?” Shepard tried to push herself up to sitting. Miranda placed a strong slim hand on her shoulder.

 

“Yes. The search continues, but it seems clear that there are whole aspects of the Citadel we never understood, and maybe never will. Sleep if you can. There is next to nothing you can do now, besides heal.”

 

Shepard laid back against her pillows. Her energy was already fading again, “The areas on the Citadel I went through after I hit the beam were parts I have never seen before. They seemed to exist purely for the Catalyst and its purpose.” She closed her eyes again, and they opened them quickly.

 

“Please. If you have any information on the Normandy…” Shepard sounded exhausted, but the need in her voice overrode everything else.

 

“You will hear immediately. I promise.” Miranda grasped one of Shepard’s hands in her own. “ I want to hear as well.” Shepard’s eyes fluttered closed. Miranda let go of Shepard’s hand and checked her readings one more time. As she let herself out of the room she took one look back at Shepard’s sleeping form. The grafts on her face would fuse and the broken bones and internal bleeding were already healing, but Miranda could do nothing to heal her of the hole that would be left if the Normandy didn’t report soon.

 

 

 

 

“Dammit!” Garrus yelled “Dammit, Dammit, Dammit!”

 

“Hey boss? I get your feelings, I do, but yelling at the console is not going to bring it back online. I wish it were that easy.” Joker took his hat off and ran his hands through his hair. Jamming it back on his head, he turned brusquely and walked back towards the airlock.

 

Garrus leaned back. He was sitting in the copilot’s seat attempting to get the console that EDI had worked with back online. They were almost ready, but the cyberwarfare suites and navigating that EDI did were too complex to fix, so Garrus was trying to tell the Normandy to bypass it and rely on input from the crew instead. Unfortunately Joker was not taking this turn well. Nobody had spoken EDI’s name in ages, but everyone knew that bypassing her meant that she wasn’t coming back anytime soon.

 

It was beginning to get a little dire. Alenko and Vega had begun going out on expeditions in the jungle to find food, as their stores were beginning to dwindle. They had found a good source of water, and some local fruit, but as this was levo planet both Garrus and Tali had begin to ration the dextro stores they had. In fact Garrus hadn’t eaten that day, even though Tali had made sure to bring a ration bar by this morning. He had no idea when they would leave and he didn’t feel he needed it quite yet. Maybe he was wrong, if he was losing his temper at a machine.

 

He extricated himself from the console as best he could, these seats weren’t made for the way his legs bent or his spurs, but he still managed to get stuck in the narrow space between the seat and the console.

 

“Joker?” Garrus called, “You still nearby?”

 

No answer.

 

Ugh. Garrus pushed against the console. He never felt more like an alien than when he had to navigate these small human spaces. He shoved again and was able to get himself loose, but he fell back into the wall beside the co-pilot’s seat and collided hard, sliding to the floor. He hit the wall so hard that the panel came away, falling on his head, followed by a shower of other debris.

 

“Spirits! Damn it all!” Yelled Garrus. He took a minute to catch his breath and then pulled himself up to his feet. Surveying the damage he found that it wasn’t a wall panel that had fallen on top of him. It was a the false front of a hidden compartment in the wall. The false front had come away and pile of datapads was neatly tucked away in the compartment that was revealed.

 

Garrus scrambled for the top one. What could have been hidden in the wall of the cockpit? Did the Illusive Man plant info when Cerberus built the ship? Something during the retrofits? He powered on the first datapad.

 

_To whom it may concern,_

_I believe that a contingency may exist in the future in which I may no longer function properly as the ships AI, within or without my portable format. I have created this store of information to help bypass the aspects of the Normandy that are run by my programs, so that it is possible to continue without an AI onboard. The Illusive Man and Cerberus used reaper level technologies to create me, therefore if the reapers are killed completely using anything that targets those systems, probability stands that the AI systems I use will also cease to function._

_If this reality has come to pass and my capabilities are non-functioning, I want to make clear that my time with the crew of the Normandy is un-paralleled in my existence, and Jeff’s courage in unshackling me when he did created an experience I could not have conceived of. Thank you._

_Please continue to take care of yourselves and each other. I do not understand my feelings for each of you, but I know that I feel something when I think about the Normandy struggling and not being there to help._

_And please make Jeff eat and sleep. He may not do so himself. I worry that he will become unhealthy if left to his own devices._

_Good luck,_

_EDI_


End file.
